Nazis block Jews from entering the University of Vienna. Austria, 1938.

Background

Antisemitism and the persecution of Jews were central tenets of Nazi ideology.

In their 25-point party program published in 1920, Nazi Party members publicly declared their intention to segregate Jews from “Aryan” society and to abrogate their political, legal, and civil rights.

Nazi leaders began to make good on their pledge to persecute German Jews soon after their assumption of power. During the first six years of Hitler's dictatorship, from 1933 until the outbreak of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of their public and private lives. Many of these were national laws that had been issued by the German administration and affected all Jews. But state, regional, and municipal officials, acting on their own initiatives, also issued many exclusionary decrees in their own communities. Thus, hundreds of individuals in all levels of government throughout the country were involved in the persecution of Jews as they conceived, discussed, drafted, adopted, enforced, and supported anti-Jewish legislation. No corner of Germany was left untouched.

The first major law to curtail the rights of Jewish citizens was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7, 1933, which excluded Jews and the “politically unreliable” from civil service. The new law was the German authorities' first formulation of the so-called Aryan Paragraph, a regulation used to exclude Jews (and often, by extension, other “non-Aryans”) from organizations, professions, and other aspects of public life. This would become the foundation of the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, which defined Jews not by religious belief but by ancestral lineage and which formalized their segregation from the so-called Aryan population.

In April 1933, German law restricted the number of Jewish students at German schools and universities. In the same month, further legislation sharply curtailed “Jewish activity” in the medical and legal professions. Subsequent decrees restricted reimbursement of Jewish doctors from public (state) health insurance funds. The city of Berlin forbade Jewish lawyers and notaries to work on legal matters, the mayor of Munich forbade Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients, and the Bavarian interior ministry denied admission of Jewish students to medical school.

At the national level, the Nazi government revoked the licenses of Jewish tax consultants, imposed a 1.5 percent quota on the admission of “non-Aryans” to public schools and universities, fired Jewish civilian workers from the army, and in early 1934, forbade Jewish actors to perform on the stage or screen. Local governments also issued regulations that affected other spheres of Jewish life: in Saxony, Jews could no longer slaughter animals according to ritual purity requirements, effectively preventing them from obeying Jewish dietary laws.

Government agencies at all levels aimed to exclude Jews from the economic sphere of Germany by preventing them from earning a living. Jews were required to register their domestic and foreign property and assets, a prelude to the gradual expropriation of their material wealth by the state. Likewise, German authorities intended to “Aryanize” all Jewish-owned businesses, a process involving the dismissal of Jewish workers and managers as well as the transfer of companies and enterprises to non-Jewish Germans, who bought them at prices officially fixed well below market value. By the spring of 1939, such efforts had succeeded in transferring most Jewish-owned businesses in Germany into “Aryan” hands.

The Nuremberg Race Laws formed the cornerstone of Nazi racial policy. Their introduction in September 1935 heralded a new wave of antisemitic legislation that brought about immediate and concrete segregation. German court judges could not cite legal commentaries or opinions written by Jewish authors, Jewish officers were expelled from the army, and Jewish university students were not allowed to sit for doctoral exams.

In 1937 and 1938, German authorities again stepped up legislative persecution of German Jews. They set out to impoverish Jews and remove them from the German economy by requiring them to register their property and preventing them from earning a living. The Nazis forbade Jewish doctors to treat non-Jews and they revoked the licenses of Jewish lawyers. In August 1938, German authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men and women bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin had to add “Israel” and “Sara,” respectively, to their given names. All Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage, and, in the autumn of 1938, all Jewish passports were stamped with an identifying letter “J.”

Following the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9-10, 1938, Nazi legislation barred Jews from all public schools and universities, as well as from cinemas, theaters, and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews were forbidden to enter designated “Aryan” zones. The government required Jews to identify themselves in ways that would permanently separate them from the rest of the population. As the Nazi leaders quickened preparations for their European war of conquest, the antisemitic legislation they enacted in Germany and Austria paved the way for more radical persecution of Jews.

The following list shows 29 of the more than 400 legal restrictions imposed upon Jews and other groups during the first six years of the Nazi regime.

Chart to describe Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935 and the respective regulation of 14 November 1935. The "Nuremberg Laws" established a legal basis for racial identification. Only people with four non-Jewish German grandparents (four white circles in top row left) were of "German blood". A Jew was defined by the Nazis as someone who descended from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). In the middle stood people of "mixed blood" of the "first or second degree." A Jewish grandparent was defined as a person who was ever a member of a Jewish religious community. Also includes a list of allowed marriages ("Ehe gestattet") and forbidden marriages ("Ehe verboten").